Retailers and service providers increasingly provide different products or services to different customers. For example, a retailer or service provider may want to provide a particular product or service (or a particular promotion or pricing for a product or service) only to selected customers. The selected customers may be customers who are members of a loyalty program, who are previous or repeat customers, who already own specific products or services from the retailer or service provider, or the like.
In the illustrative case of mobile service providers, the determination of whether a particular product or service (including a promotion or price) should be offered to a customer involves a large number of interdependent evaluation criteria, such as whether the customer is a new or existing customer; the customer's current service plans or devices; the service plans, devices, or upgrades required for the new product or service; whether the product or service is a new purchase or an upgrade or replacement; whether the customer is of a type entitled to a discount; or the like.
Because of the large number of factors that need to be evaluated to determine whether a particular product or service should be offered to a customer, and because of the interrelatedness of these factors, the computational effort necessary to make such determinations using conventional processing approaches is significant. A need therefore exists for a more efficient manner of authorizing customers for particular products or services.